


Lessons in Humility

by A_Shark_Named_Max



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 17:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19010128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Shark_Named_Max/pseuds/A_Shark_Named_Max
Summary: Lilith wasn't a petty person, okay that was a lie.





	Lessons in Humility

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on ff.net, my first work in the Borderlands scene. I'm pretty proud of it.

Lilith wasn't a petty person.

Okay, that was a lie but she wouldn't say she was a terribly petty person who holds grudges-okay that was a really big lie. Lilith at least liked to think she had good reasons for her motives, more or less.

But this one particular situation felt dumb, just really dumb. And embarrassing.

* * *

After the whole fiasco with Athena's capture, Helios falling and preparing for a future unknown war with.. something, things were complicated enough.

Lilith felt like she had been holding things down, with the new vault hunters, having Brick and Mordecai with her, Jack dead and Hyperion not a threat anymore; things were feeling pretty smooth especially with her transition as the new leader of the Crimson Raiders.

She knew they would eventually have to figure out what to do on how to plan on a unknown enemy coming for Pandora (The Watcher not exactly giving them a lot of answers), they needed to get to the vaults on the other planets and having a galaxy map helped a lot but they couldn't stretch themselves too thin. At least not so soon.

Brick was more than ready for off-world vault hunting and while Athena was no longer a prisoner that didn't mean Lilith was ready to let her go just yet, things still needed to be done.

Or they were suppose to if she didn't magically disappear in the fall of Helios excitement.

Normally Mordecai would help in tracking, but Talon was too young and there really wasn't anything to use to track Athena down again. They were lucky when they got tip that first time, but the word on the wind was that Vallory was dead so that was a no go.

It was a few days before they got a lead, by Claptrap of all people. Robot, whatever.

Apparently, while everyone in Sanctuary was busy starting up at the sky watching the symbol of Hyperion crash and burn, Claptrap was busy figuring out a new dance move to really impress everyone and he just rambled a bit until Lilith yelled at him and he finally blurted that he sew Athena and a mysterious lady making for the Fast-travel in Pierce Station.

Annoying, but luckily they could just check on the past logs for what places had been selected that day, easy since they kinda had a kid genius with them.

With Gaige's help, they were able to narrow down three possible locations, The Dust, Frostburn Canyons and Hollow Point. The plan was simple, they were only to scout out until they found her and were to report back immediately, Lilith would do the talking.

Or try to, no promises at this point.

It didn't take long, they made sure to send those who wouldn't draw too much attention to themselves, so Krieg and Sal were out on default.

Zer0 and Maya reported back from Hollow Point, and Lilith made her way as quick as she could. They told her they saw Athena stop at one of Scooters' garages for a lengthy amount of time and left with another woman.

That must of been the mystery lady Claptrap saw, Lilith told them to go back to Sanctuary.

* * *

Hollow Point was a shithole, cramped and full of psychos and bandits of every color, regular folk trying to blend in and failing considering the amount of bodies she passed by in alleyways. Plus it was quite literally a hole in a mountain, guess this is why it took so long to find Athena.

As Lilith neared Scooters', she could see both garage doors were wide open and peering inside she assumed was the mystery lady, who was busy working on a runner. Lilith watched as she worked, briefly wondering why in the hell she would bother helping or how Athena even convince this poor women to help her escape. Though maybe she shouldn't say that, for all she knew, this women could be just as dangerous.

Lilith remembers first meeting Athena, while she was willing and could work with a team, she gave off the vibe that she preferred being alone, even when they met again on Elpis.

But now..?

Lilith cleared her throat as she walked farther into the garage, the woman rolled out from under the runner, a greeting on the tip of her tongue but it dies once she sees Lilith.

Okay, looks like she knows who she is.

"I'm gonna assume you probably know why I'm here, pretty ballsy sneaking into Sanctuary and escaping with a prisoner."

"Yeah, well.. you're the one who can go invisible, right?" The women stands up from the creeper, wiping her greased stained hands on her already dirty pants.

"That's right." The woman sighs and mumbles something Lilith couldn't hear, "Well, if Athena is who you're looking for, she isn't here."

Lilith moves towards the garage office and taking a seat at the desk inside, it was littered with wrappers and stacks of papers where at the top, Lilith could see the name of who she assumed was the woman so she filed that away for now. "That's fine, I can wait." A beat of silence passed before she hears the woman speak quietly in a harsh tone, "If you're gonna be here, I'm not gonna let you be a surprise for her."

Lilith kicked her feet up on the desk, "Fine by me."

* * *

It was probably a little more than half an hour before the sounds of running could be heard growing closer and Athena's voice spoke out from the front of the garage, breathlessly calling out the women's name.

Lilith steeled herself as she moved out of the office, the sight of Athena speaking softly to Springs with her gloved hand on her face, as soon as Athena saw Lilith she stopped talking and gently maneuvered the other woman behind her.

"What do you want Lilith?"

"We have unfinished business, Athena."

"Jack is dead and Helios is gone, what more could you want?"

Lilith snorted, "You heard the Watcher, shit is gonna go down and we need every Vault Hunter on Pandora."

"I'm not a vault hunter anymore." Athena clenched her hands tighter as Springs moved closer to grasp her wrist. Interesting.

"So what was that you were doing with those chumps Brick and Mordecai found you with, cause it sounded a lot like vault hunting to me?"

"I was hired to train them to  **be**  vault hunters, that was it." Athena was close to yelling now and Lilith was loosing her patience. "Yeah, sure. Look, this could get ugly so come back to Sanctuary and we can talk."

"I'm not leaving, if you have anything to say, you can say it here."

"Okay fine." Lilith shifted her gaze towards Springs, "Is she gonna go or..?"

"She stays." Athena growled out.

Lilith huffed but agreed.

And that was how it started, after closing up the garage, Lilith relayed she wanted Athena back working for the Crimsons Raiders considering the Watcher went out of it's way to save her and the "war" (that they still didn't really have any idea about) that they needed to start partially planning for, she needed to be back in Sanctuary to cooperate. Athena listened to everything she said, but she didn't agree right away surprisingly, she told Lilith she would give her an answer by tomorrow possibly.

Lilith didn't want to wait, what the hell was so hard about this? But she agreed to the terms but warned Athena if she didn't get an answer she would find her again.

"Noted."

As Lilith made her way towards the Hollow Point fast-travel station, she could feel eyes follow her before she teleported away.

True to her word, Athena echoed her the next day as she said she would and agreed to working with the Crimsons Raiders, but she would stay in Hollow Point and only come to Sanctuary when it was necessary.

Cue probably the most frustrating alliance Lilith had to handle so far, intimidating bandits and getting them to do what she wanted was easy but Athena while cautious was stubborn; she didn't even flinch when she called the firing squad on her before. What made it even more annoying was she kept bringing.. Springs, yeah that was her name, to their meetings and when asked she would just say, "Anything you have to say, the both of us can hear."

Lilith was more then ready to put up with Athena, but she still didn't know anything about who this mystery woman was and the only other person with vast connects was Moxxi. Asking her gave a interesting talk, apparently she was a native from Elpis who ran a junkshop and was well-known for being probably the only person who was relatively nice as nice as anyone could possibly be. And from what Lilith could fill in on her own, was also dating Athena, how did that happen?

As their association grew on, Lilith eventually got used to it and watched as Athena seemed to grow less agitated every time she had to come to Sanctuary and even strike up a surprisingly tentative friendship with Brick.

Then again, Brick seemed less angry when he heard about how Athena was involved with Jack and just seem more disappointed in her, Lilith remembers how he did admit to thinking of Athena as a good kid back when she asked for help taking down Atlas. It surprised Lilith even more when she saw how Athena seemed to get along with some of the other vault hunters, heck even Tina.

The Springs chick seemed to only keep to herself or stick with Athena whenever she was brought along to Sanctuary (sometimes she couldn't come do to work), which was fair considering the situation but as Athena relaxed so did she.

Gaige latched on to her, Athena telling the younger girl how she was good with machines and Deathtrap proving to be a good point of interest for the both of them, listening in on their conversation gave Lilith a headache.

Tina practically fell over herself once she spotted her, literally yelling "OH MY GOD YOU ARE REALLY CUTE" in the Crimson Raiders' HQ.

Maya was a real surprise, from what Lilith could overhear apparently Springs was a writer and somewhere in there they bonded, it suddenly occurred to Llith she was slowly losing interest.

She was just glad that it wasn't such a pain getting Athena to work with them, and Lilith had to admit that having an on-call mechanic since Scooter was gone did make things smoother; even if Springs still seem to dislike her, that was fine.

The more time they spent in Sanctuary and the more time Lilith was able to watch them, she realized how irritated she got seeing them hold hands or lean against each other or whatever grossly cute couples do. The more she watched the more angrier she got and the more she had to drop down to Pandora and melt some bandits faces off, it usually helped.

Lilith knew she wasn't the best person, but homophobia was not something she was.

It couldn't be that, she definitely remembers not having much reaction one way or another finding out about their relationship, she was more amused by it since Athena and Springs were basically complete polar opposites, thought they did seem to share the same sort of fury. And Lilith was more than ready to enjoy seeing how flustered Athena got as opposed to how she always seemed to be.

This was annoying the hell out of her, introspect was also not a great thing she did.

It was a few weeks later when it kind of finally broke her down, as their latest meeting came to an end, Brick noticed the engagement ring on Athena and Springs' hands and everyone in the room nearly exploded.

As Lilith watched everyone congratulated them both and talk shop about their now future wedding, she feel nothing but ice cold dread and a heavy suffocating weight on her chest. She quietly slipped out of the building and fast-traveled away from Sanctuary, normally killing bandits or any monsters would help but she didn't feel up to that at all, so she ended up at Roland's memorial.

Jealousy, that was what it was.

She was jealous of what Athena and Springs had or were about to have, while Roland and her did break up after New Haven, Lilith held out some hope that maybe after Jack was gone and Hyperion wasn't beating moonshots at them anymore that maybe they could start again. And it seemed to be heading that way.

Then Roland died.

And Lilith was still trying to patch up her broken heart or ignoring maybe, it seemed so much easier to help Tina through her grief than her own. As the sun started to set, Lilith gazed up at the stoic likeness of Roland and briefly wondered if he would've wanted to marry her.

It was hours later when Brick and Mordecai found, her eyes red from crying.

* * *

Everything was a blur afterwards, Athena and Springs' mandatory visit to Sanctuary were getting sparse, which was to be expected since they were planning a wedding. Lilith was too busy planning for off-world vault hunting, if there was a war then whatever was in the vaults would hopefully help them even the odds.

Things slowed down for awhile, they need to get resources for space travel which would take some time, Sanctuary got quiet or as quiet as it could especially with Claptrap around. Word from Brick was that the wedding was beautiful and he may have cried a bit. Honestly, Helios could've fallen out of the sky again and Lilith wouldn't have noticed; she wasn't as bitter as she was before, thanks introspect, but it still left her feeling cold.

But she was happy for them, Lilith may have had her issues with Athena before, but with everything that had happened and from what she gleamed, she was glad that the angry woman she met those years before found some happiness.

Pandora wasn't merciful, and no amount of Lilith's own hang ups should ruin good news.

Time went on, whatever animosity Lilith and Athena had was put out, Springs still gave her a bit of a wide berth but didn't seem to try to melt her with her eyes. It was on some day, after Axton and Maya came back from some off world vault hunting and Lilith was by herself upstairs going over the galaxy map they had of the vaults when she heard footsteps outside the room and saw Athena by the doorway.

"Oh hey, what's up?"

"Nothing, everyone is going to Moxxi's and they wanted me to tell you."

"Ah okay, I'll be there in a few. Just finishing up here."

Usually whenever Athena played messenger, she would leave straight away but for some reason she lingered and Lilith could see her still standing by the doorway out of the corner of her eye.

"How are you doing, Lilith?" Oh, okay. That was new?

"Uh fine, why?

Lilith watched as Athena shuffled her feet before speaking again, "Brick told me-" "Oh no, no no okay so here's the thing.." God dammit Brick, he was a good friend but she was not ready for this kind of talk at all, yet at least. "I'm just.. this is gonna take awhile for me to work through, and with everything going on it might.. be awhile. So, yeah. Let's-let's stop talking about this okay?"

Athena just nods, she turns around and before she disappears around the corner, "For what it's worth, I really am sorry about Roland."

Lilith just stared at the digital map on the table, "Thanks."

Athena left and Lilith waited until she heard the door to HQ close before she started to cry.


End file.
